Ontario trumpets its creative industry strengths, including magazines

[This post has been updated]The Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC) has created a video to promote the diversity and prodigious output of Ontario's creative sector -- including magazines -- called "We've got it going ON". Among the facts included in the accompanying documentation is that Ontario is Canada's largest publishing centre, with almost half (48%) of all Canadian magazines

Cartwright sale of legal and trade publications is a major shakeup in the magazine industry

Retired Judge Ian Cartwright in Calgary
The decision by former judge Ian Cartwright to sell most of his family holdings in the privately held The Cartwright Group, including Canada Law Book will close a chapter. Cartwright, who believed that Canadian legal data should be controlled in Canada, bought Canada Law Book more than 25 years ago to keep it out of the hands of a foreign-controlled buyer

Columnist sees the U.S. magazine industry smaller, dominated by Big 4 and women-focussed

Audience Development columnist Baird Davis (a senior consultant with Circulation Specialists) has compiled data showing how U.S. consumer magazine benchmarks -- circulation, newsstand sales and advertising sales -- aligned in 2009, and the picture was not pretty. (Of course the results don't necessarily reflect Canadian experience.) He calculated that...Circulation of audited consumer magazines

News magazines an endangered species in North America

In the last five years (2003-2008) 39% of newsmagazines in North America have disappeared, dropping from 75 publications to 45, according to a story in Folio: about data published in the National Directory of Magazines. As but one example, this year, U.S. News & World Report became a biweekly.)The Directory (misnamed, since it catalogues some 20,500 U.S. and Canadian titles)says that shelter

Marco Ursi is new editor of Masthead magazine

Masthead magazine, Canada's only trade magazine about magazines, has selected Marco Ursi to be its new editor. He replaces Bill Shields, who resigned a few months ago.Ursi takes up his post today, having last week completed a summer intership at Maclean's magazine. Ursi is a graduate of Ryerson, and was editor of the spring, 2006 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism. He is also a blogger (

WSJ, USA Today planning...magazines

Two important U.S. daily newspapers have come up with a sure-fire marketing strategy -- both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today are preparing to launch (wait for it) magazines. According to a story in Ad Age, USA Today is farther along, with glossy launch planned for October. The Wall Street Journal is more in the concept stage, looking at a magazine to augment its Saturday "Weekend Edition",

Less may be more for magazines

Just catching up with a story from a couple of weeks ago in the Christian Science Monitor about the (U.S.) magazine industry. In it, the writer Randy Dotinga points out that Time magazine is actively shucking subscribers in order to get a higher quality, more profitable and attractive audience. The neighbourhood newspaper may disappear soon, he says, but magazines may have more resilience. In

Quote, unquote

Magazines connect intellectually and emotionally with an educated and thinking reading public. Those are the people who can change a direction for an institution or a company or a neighbourhood or a region.-- Neville Gilfoy, forthcoming recipient of the outstanding achievement award of the National Magazine Awards, quoted in a profile in the Chronicle-Herald (Halifax).